Funding: Bial Foundation

Meditation practices evoke strong and significant changes in the experienced relationship to mental life. Phenomenological analyses of psychological states associated with long term practice have yielded insight into the notion that a combination of cognitive changes are evoked through such practices which can be usefully categorized as increased meta-awareness (monitoring of experience), increased dereification (degree to which thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are phenomenally interpreted as mental processes rather than as accurate depictions of reality), and decreased object-orientation (experience oriented toward some object or class of objects). Both increased dereification and decreased object orientation are of key importance to the experience of “thoughtless” or “narrative free” awareness as experienced in meditation.

In open awareness meditation practices one develops the capacity to relate the thinking process in a more clear and non-reactive mode, distancing one’s self from identification with thought contents, similarly one adopts a less object-focused awareness, allowing sensations and thoughts to come and go without holding on to them. A rich body of evidence has now accrued demonstrating that the capacity to shift one’s cognitive filters in this way is associated with increased mindfulness and measures of well-being that are salient to both mental and physical health.   The current project seeks to characterize the specific brain circuits subserving the momentary experiences of narrative-free awareness in long term open-awareness & mindfulness meditation practitioners and to compare such states to mind/brain states encountered in meditation novices.  We hope to generate insight into the neural changes underlying the experience of clear narrative-free awareness as a way of understanding this state of consciousness and it’s psychological importance.  This study involves coming to the lab for one day of EEG acquisition and one day of fMRI acquisition.

To inquire about or enroll in this study please e-mail George Heredia at gh_236@usc.edu